Supervisor David Campos sent out a press release Tuesday afternoon after the Board of Supervisors vote on legislation regarding short-term rentals, saying that the legislation approved in a 6-5 vote will not help with the housing crisis whatsoever.
“In fact, if anything, there is reason to believe that the new law will make things worse,” Campos wrote.
Campos said that the new legislation fails to compel hosting platforms, like Airbnb, to provide any data to the city that help monitor the hosts abusing short term rentals. City planners have long said that they have no way of enforcing any legislation without such data. The measure approved Tuesday requires nothing from the short term rental platforms.
“I support casual home sharing but we cannot adequately address our housing crisis without limiting short-term rentals with meaningful and enforced laws,” wrote Campos.
The proposal passed by the Board was amended to preserve the current cap requirement of 90 days for unhosted rentals and no limit for hosted rentals, striking down the 120-day cap originally in the legislation by Supervisor Mark Farrell and Mayor Ed Lee. The amendments were introduced by Supervisor Julie Christensen and passed 6-5.
Here is Campos’ press release in full:
“Today, on a 6-5 vote, a slim majority of my colleagues at the Board of Supervisors (Supervisors Farrell, Cohen, Breed, Wiener, Tang and Christensen) passed a law that purports to regulate short term rentals but in reality does nothing more than maintain the status quo. In fact, if anything, there is reason to believe that the new law will make things worse.After months of political theater that tried to make voters believe that City Hall is dealing with the impact of short-term rentals on our housing market, the new law gives AirBNB everything it asked for and more. I support casual home sharing but we cannot adequately address our housing crisis without limiting short-term rentals with meaningful and enforced laws. Today’s vote makes it abundantly clear that corporate influence has reached a disturbing level at City Hall. In this climate, real regulation is impossible without the voters of San Francisco taking control of the issue.”
Correction: We previously stated that the proposal passed by the Board included the 120-day cap originally in the proposal by Supervisor Farrell and Mayor Lee. Because of amendments by Supervisor Christensen, the legislation passed continues the current caps of 90 days for unhosted rentals and no limit for hosted rentals.